40 people arrested on suspected Twitch money laundering

A file photo of the Twitch banner is shown. — The alleged fraud used Twitch to launder money.

On Tuesday, Turkish police arrested forty suspects in eleven different provinces for alleged money laundering fraud the streaming platform Twitch.

According to Demiroren News Agency (over Daily Sabah

and Dexter) suspects are accused of using stolen credit cards to purchase bits, which are essentially the platform’s virtual currency. Those bits were then supposedly sent to streamers who then paid the scammers real money through a 70-80 percent refund.

So if the scammers bought 1,000 bits for $ 10, that way they could make $ 7 or $ 8 on a stolen credit card and streamers pick up the difference. Combine more stolen credit cards and much larger dollar amounts and you end up in a scam that could run to an estimated $ 9.8 million.

This seems like a lengthy operation, the email paper trail of which goes back two years.

The arrests were the result of a fraud investigation by the Attorney General’s Office. Of the forty people were taken into police custody, some suspects are said to be minors.

Daily Sabah covered the alleged fraud in November 2021, after a thread with the title “Thief KO streamers” appeared in a well-known Turkish forum, frmtr.com. The thread claimed that some smaller streamers were making significant amounts of money with just 40 to 50 viewers. But not only forum threads sounded the alarm.

End of October 2021, Ahmet “Jahrein” announced in a tweet that he had documents supporting the money laundering allegations. With 1.7 million subscribers, Jahrein is one of the most famous streamers in Turkey. “Cheering with Bits laundered money anonymously with stolen credit cards,” wrote Jahrein (via Wall english). Years in, urged Twitch to act quickly to stop these abuses.

Some streamers have admitted participate in the ruse – or at least that they got into all the mess. But how much did they know about the alleged fraud? Were you there? It is up to the Turkish authorities to investigate and, if necessary, to prove it.

Is this an isolated incident or does it happen elsewhere?